Topic: Microsoft

Microsoft announced quarterly operating profits of just $3.1 billion on revenues of $20.6 billion, hit hard by slow sales of Office, a 17 percent drop in cloud profits, an $870 million decline from Windows Phone and tepid Surface sales that grew by 9 percent year over year but remained below $1 billion.

A U.S. Federal Court has ruled in Microsoft's favor in a closely-watch case involving a warrant the government obtained for a customer's emails stored on an Irish server. The ruling frees U.S. companies from being forced to hand over customer data if it's not being stored within the U.S.

On Tuesday a new pact, Privacy Shield, went into effect between the U.S. and the European Union, giving American companies a simpler alternative to dealing with the E.U.'s normal data protection rules when shuttling data across the Atlantic.

Just hours before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote was scheduled to start, LinkedIn's iOS Developer Community canceled its San Francisco-based watch party, following the news that the social networking service was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion.

Microsoft on Monday announced it will acquire LinkedIn in an all-cash transaction worth $26.2 billion, bringing more than 433 million members of the social networking site under the Redmond, Wash., company's banner.

While a variety of tech commentators have played up a dramatic "voice-first" rivalry ostensibly led by the Amazon Echo, a yet-unreleased Google Home and Microsoft's Cortana (and apparently miserably trailed by Apple's Siri), real data shows that's not actually the case.

Microsoft wants to inject its own software and services into the agenda for Apple's Worldwide Developers conference next week, hoping to lure attendees to an offsite afterparty with the promise of drinks and prizes.

Last week, developer Marco Arment suggested in a blog posting that if Apple were to fail to grasp the potential for voice-based Artificial Intelligence to change the nature of smartphone demand, the company's core revenue generator could suffer the same fate as RIM's Blackberry, which a decade prior had similarly failed to see the importance of iPhone's advanced multitouch experience until it was too late to do anything about it.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a restructuring of its mobile hardware group that will see as many as 1,850 employees -- most of them former Nokia staffers -- lose their jobs as the company looks to right the listing smartphone ship.

Microsoft's steady decline in the mobile phone business continues, as the Redmond, Wash., company announced on Wednesday that it will sell the feature phone division it acquired from Nokia to a subsidiary of manufacturer Foxconn for $350 million.

A variety of wireless carriers and smartphone and tablet makers, including Apple, are reportedly being asked by U.S. regulators to explain how they review and push out security updates to their customers.

Users of Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service will now be able to browse more easily through their files -- as long as they have an iPhone 6s -- as the Redmond giant has taken a shine to Apple's 3D Touch.

Microsoft is sending out email alerts to OneDrive customers, warning people with free 15-gigabyte accounts that their storage will shrink to 5 gigabytes on August 10, assuming they didn't previously opt into keeping the higher amount.

In what could be described as a somewhat surprising move given the company's proclivity for indecision, Microsoft on Thursday announced that it would stick to the plan it announced last year and begin charging for Windows upgrades this summer.

New data from Net Applications shows that Apple's installed base of Mac users now account for 9.2 percent of the conventional PCs used online, as Microsoft's Windows platform falls to a new low among online users.

Intel is ending production of its mobile Atom processors as the reality sets in of a mobile world where virtually all the profits are inhaled by devices sold by Apple and powered by the iPhone-maker's own custom Ax series Application Processors.